CRI听力:Zonad Helps Chinese Viewers Get to Know Ireland

Anchor: Coinciding with Ireland's National Day at the World Expo 2010, 13 Irish feature films are being screened at the Shanghai International Film Festival to celebrate Irish culture and highlight Irish filmmaking talent.

Among them is "Zonad", one of the 16 competition films for Golden Goblet Award this year. It is a comedy about an escapee from an alcohol rehab facility who hides out in a village in rural Ireland and fools the locals by pretending to be a visitor from outer space.

Liu Yan got a chance to watch this film and have a little taste of Irish humor.

The Irish are known for drinking. And drinking is indeed prominently featured in "Zonad", so much so that one cannot help but wonder if there's a hidden message somewhere.

Director Kieran Carney says that's not the case.

"Drinking has always been a part of Irish culture. The focus in any town or villages is the pub. People meet and socialize. In urban areas, of course, it's a problem with over-indulgence. But we're not really trying to teach a lesson to the viewers. We're just trying to be funny."

Producer Andrew Lowe adds, to some extent, the excessive drinking scenes were done as a sort of protest against Irish stereotypes.

"So whenever Americans make films about Ireland, they always have all the Irish people in the village, in the pub. So it was partly, just to (serve) as a send-up about it, kind of an ironic twist on that, and just by tweaking it a little bit, making it a bit more exaggerated."

Exaggerated or not, the movie certainly delivers in the funny department. Simon Delaney is the lead actor who plays the title character Zonad. He has a great sense of humor that works perfectly for this film.

"I would love to say that I put weight on purposely for the film, but I didn't. I was just fat (laughs). But also, it's uh, I challenge anybody to look skinny in that costume, because that is a very, very small costume (laughs)."

And like the vast majority of successful comedies out there, "Zonad" has plenty of sex-related jokes in it. Director Carney says there's no need to get worried or offended.

"I think the more adult stuff is done in a kind of gentle way, and not a very forceful way.
Hopefully it's done with the best possible taste. And all we're trying to do is be funny."

Jokes aside, producer Lowe says they hope to find a distributor interested in taking on the film and releasing it here in China.

"There's something very powerful culturally about being able to see other films from other cultures. And certainly in Ireland, most people, any knowledge they have of China is through Chinese films. And we hope that as many people as possible in China get to see these films, so they can learn a little bit about Ireland."

That's my hope as well. And one can certainly start with "Zonad".

For CRI, I'm Liu Yan in Shanghai.